Scott Newman Is Willing to Stand on His Head to Help With FST

During 30+ years at a university, you experience a lot of changes. If you’re Institutional Research and Analytics (IRA) Assistant Director Scott Newman, you’ve helped lead some of those changes as well. The Finance Strategic Transformation (FST) project will benefit from Newman’s wealth of institutional knowledge now that he’s joined the team part-time as the Senior Systems Remediation Analyst. This arrangement enables Newman to continue duties related to his IRA role while also contributing to FST for up to 50% of his time. 

“I’d been interested in having some involvement in FST,” Newman explains, “and I’d already been involved with Finance for UBI, so I was interested to know the project’s impacts on UBI.” 

His work with University Business Intelligence (UBI) gives Newman an understanding of what kind of data people are pulling out of the system. For the FST project, Newman will start helping the Student Information System (SIS) and Operational Data Store (ODS) users with their remediation needs however he can. A number of schools and units pull data from ODS into their applications, so part of the remediation effort is to determine what needs will remain when UVA transitions to using Workday Financials in 2022. 

“I’m not a Finance expert, but I’ve worked with data and reporting out of administrative systems for many years. In ODS, for example, I created some of the views that people use to pull information out. Having exposure to that, and working on the Integrated System project, should enable me to help stakeholders with remediation.”

The Office of Sponsored Programs, School of Medicine, and Custom Applications & Consulting Services (in terms of applications they’ve created for UVA clients) all have remediation needs that Newman knows of related to ODS use. 

“We’re running queries in ODS right now to see who’s actively using it,” says Newman. “Those will be the people I reach out to first.” 

Having just started this month, Newman explains he’s in ramp-up mode. He’s attending to things in his IRA role that require more time right now and absorbing information about the project, in particular information about the Foundation Data Model, the Workday Financials term for Chart of Accounts (COA).

Outside of work, Newman’s main hobbies are tennis and gymnastics. The picture, right, shows off his nautical headstand prowess. During the pandemic, part of how he’s kept up his gymnastic activities is to put a wall mat up in his kitchen to protect it when he practices handstands.